Veteran LGBT rights advocate Bob Witeck, CEO and co-founder of the D.C. public relations firm Witeck-Combs Communications, has been named a recipient of Arlington County’s annual Human Rights Award.

Witeck and two others along with a community organization that were selected as this year’s winners of the James B. Hunter Human Rights Award “represent the very best in Arlington,” said Raul Torres, executive director of the Arlington Human Rights Commission.

“Through their work, they help to ensure that Arlington remains true to its vision of being a community in which each individual is important,” Torres said.

Witeck, a longtime Arlington resident, is recognized, among other things, as an “advocate for LGBT civil rights, particularly among corporate America,” a statement from the Human Rights Commission says.

Witeck’s firm has been credited with helping some of the nation’s most prominent corporations reach out to the LGBT community.

He was scheduled to accept the award at a ceremony Thursday night, Dec. 8, at the Arlington County Central Library.

Lou Chibbaro Jr. has reported on the LGBT civil rights movement and the LGBT community for more than 30 years, beginning as a freelance writer and later as a staff reporter and currently as Senior News Reporter for the Washington Blade. He has chronicled LGBT-related developments as they have touched on a wide range of social, religious, and governmental institutions, including the White House, Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the military, local and national law enforcement agencies and the Catholic Church. Chibbaro has reported on LGBT issues and LGBT participation in local and national elections since 1976. He has covered the AIDS epidemic since it first surfaced in the early 1980s.
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